The Coast of Coral by Arthur C. Clarke

Author:Arthur C. Clarke
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Coast of Coral, Fiction, Underwater Technology
Publisher: 24 W. 25th St. New York, NY 10010

XVI

Through the Torres Straits

The Gahleru pulled out of T.I. harbor at seven o’clock in the morning, into the teeth of a twenty-knot wind which soon brought the waves smashing into the scuppers. We sat on deck, talking to the crew and taking photographs whenever the spray allowed us to uncover the cameras. The ship’s complement consisted of four whites and five col­ored: the skipper, Bill Parker; the research station’s tech­nical assistant, Dave Tranter; Mike and myself; Horace and Gordon, the divers; Johnnie and Korea, their tenders; and Stephen, deck hand and cook. The four whites became more and more dusky during the course of the voyage, through the positive effect of sunlight and the negative effect of washing in salt water; but the rest of the crew always managed to keep a few shades ahead of us.

After seven hours’ cruising in a northeasterly direction from T.I., we anchored off the low, mangrove-fringed beach of Long Island. The dinghy was lowered, and a small expedition equipped with spears, rifles, and Leicas landed on the dead coral strand. It was a lonely place, but far from lifeless, as the cries of unknown birds, disturbed by our presence, came echoing out of the jungle.

The beach was about a hundred yards wide, and con­sisted entirely of fragments of dead coral which had been smoothed by the waves and bleached a nondescript gray by the sun. There was no sand whatsoever, at least on this side of the island. We walked for a mile along the flat carpet formed by this coral graveyard, coming occasionally across larger boulders which had not yet been broken down by the waves.

Gordon, who had brought a spear, waded through the shallows jabbing occasionally at a passing fish, though without any success at all. Johnnie had disappeared with a large sack and a metal spike, looking for a sandy beach beneath which turtle eggs might be buried. The technique for finding turtle eggs is quite simple; you walk along likely sections of the beach, jabbing your spike into the sand until it comes up sticky and with sand glued to it. Then you start digging, and a foot down you will come across a hundred or so white and leathery eggs, looking exactly like somewhat dented ping-pong balls.

Mike and I, on the lookout for crocodiles, crept along the edge of the mangrove swamp with gun and camera at the alert. A mangrove forest is a mysterious and rather depressing place, with its mixture of sunlight and shadow, its slow streams winding through the tangled maze of roots. Each mangrove tree, to anchor itself in the wet and shifting soil, is supported by a widespread system of roots which begins a yard or more from the ground, and resem­bles the flying buttresses of a medieval cathedral.

We met no crocodiles, which was disappointing but may have been lucky, for in this part of the world they grow to twenty-five feet in length. But we did come across the largest and most magnificent

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